Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 5

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 29

INTRODUCTION
Book VIII of the Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra, the Neminathacaritra, includes also the lives of Kṛṣṇa, the ninth Vasudeva, Balarama, the ninth Balabhadra, and Jarasandha, the ninth Prativasudeva. It gives more space to Kṛṣṇa than to Neminatha himself and is, in fact, a Jain Harivansa. The origin of the Harivansa is told in 6. 7. 12-110 of the Trişaşți. The first chapter of Book VIII narrates the previous incarnations of Neminatha and then he is practically forgotten until Chapter IX. Chapters II-IV are a long wearisome account of Vasudeva's many marriages. Chapters V-VIII concern Kṛṣṇa's affairs, with much repetitious detail of battles, especially the one in which Jarasandha is killed. However, Hemacandra manages as usual to introduce interesting episodes which redeem the tiresome narrative of unromantic marriages and fighting. The founding and destruction of Dvārakā are interesting and offer data for the much-discussed site of Kṛṣṇa's Dvārakā.
Book IX includes the lives of Brahmadatta, the twelfth cakravartin, and of Pärśvanatha. The life of Brahmadatta is best known to Europeans from Jacobi's Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Mâhârâshṭri, translated in Meyer's Hindu Tales. Hemachandra's account agree in general with that one, but not in all details. There is a Brahmadattakatha also in the Yogaśāstra commentary, pp. 75-90, Bhavnagar edition.
The rest of Book IX gives a detailed account of Pārśvanatha's life, into which much doctrinal and didactic material is introduced. There are many Pārśvanathacaritras, but the one most available is Bhavadevasūri's, which has been summarized and treated by M. Bloomfield in The Life and Stories of the Jaina Savior Parçvanatha. Hemacandra's version is much briefer, but contains many of the subordinate incidents of the longer work.